7 Stages of Effective Decision Making in Business

Every day, the decision-making process is something that everyone must do. Both decisions for business interests and personal needs. The decision-making process is an important process that you must master.

When you have to make a difficult decision, it's important to understand the effective decision-making process. Moreover, if it has a major impact on business continuity and the interests of many people.

Definition of Decision Making Process?

The decision-making process is a method of solving problems by gathering information, assessing alternatives, and choosing the right decision. Decision making does not only apply to business interests, but also in a personal context.

By using appropriate steps to make decisions, managers and leaders in a company can make decisions more efficiently. This can have a positive impact on the company's performance and help the business achieve its targets.

How to Do Decision Making

Unconsciously, decision making has become a part of life. However, an effective decision-making process consists of important steps that can be adapted in the following ways.

1. Problem Identification

The right decision comes from understanding the right problem. This step is important to be able to identify situations, challenges, and opportunities that are faced. At this stage, it is also necessary to consider what you want the decision to be.

2. Gather Information

Relevant and essential information is the main key of the whole decision-making process. To be able to make the right business decisions, you need sales data, market research results, or feedback from consumers and clients

Managers and stakeholders have an important role which will also have a direct impact on the decisions to be taken. This can help to gather relevant information.

Not limited to data or information that you get from the company, have discussions with external partners or consultants to get additional information. This step can help you to have complete information. With complete information, decisions can be made using accurate data and facts.

3. Identify Alternatives

At this stage, you already have a deep understanding of the problem and already have the relevant information to make a decision. Without realizing it, you already have various options or alternative decisions that can be taken.

The more options you have, the more ways you have to solve your problem. At this stage, think about the impact of each option you have. From the various options available, compare the options that best support the achievement of business targets.

4. Assessing Various Options

After having various alternatives, you need to evaluate which option is most likely to be implemented. Managers must be able to assess various options by assessing which option has the highest success rate.

This assessment process can be carried out in various ways, such as a SWOT analysis or a list of strengths and weaknesses. Feel free to ask your colleagues or team for their opinion in assessing these options. If possible, rate each one.

5. Choose from Various Options

At this stage, it's time to choose the best option from the available options. Make sure you understand the various opportunities and risks of the selected option. You can also combine different options into a solid decision if relevant information is available.

6. It's Time to Act

Now it's time to design an implementation plan for the decisions you've made. At this stage, you need to identify what resources you need. This step is an important step to ensure that stakeholders and the team have the same vision.

The same understanding in implementing decisions. At this stage, several colleagues will ask about details and challenges that may be faced. Prepare yourself to prepare solutions and answers, so that decisions can be implemented properly.

7. Evaluate Decisions

This step is an important step that is often overlooked in the decision-making process. The value of decisions that have a positive or negative impact on business performance. By evaluating decisions, you can adapt and be trained to make better decisions in the future.

Perform an in-depth analysis of existing opportunities as well as analyze possible threats that will arise in the future. This can be trained through the Problem Solving & Decision Making program so that company executives are able to analyze light problems to complex problems.